We haven't scratched the surface of what we can do with exclusive communities.

People want to join exclusive communities. They want to be insiders. They want to feel special. They want to feel above average.

Exclusivity is an easy positioning tool against established online communities. It slips you in the back door. If you only let the best people in, the best people want to join.

Exclusive communities can steal the best people away from established communities.

But it can’t be for show. You can’t be an exclusive community that lets anyone in. You can’t even let most people in – not even your buddies. You have to be mean, you have to let people apply to join the community, you have to turn some away, you have to encourage members to refer their friends, you have to have a high criteria (which keeps getting higher as the community grows, not lower).

You may even have to kick people out from time to time.

But, imagine what you can do when the 500 richest, most powerful, most influential, most active or most notable people in your sector are participating in the community. That's a value a community of 50,000 can't match.

Perhaps better, you can build a business on this. You can charge for exclusive communities. You can focus your efforts on reaching and keeping the few than chasing a never-achievable number. It's easier to build an exclusive community than a non-exclusive community.